Читать книгу The Alvarez & Pescoli Series - Lisa Jackson - Страница 20

MacGregor’s question hung in the air between them while the dog, at last having given up bristling all over, turned in a circle in front of the hearth before settling onto a rag rug near the heat.

Her heart was pounding.

He was so damned close.

She thought about whipping out the knife, of telling him to back off, but she didn’t, not yet. Best to hold the weapon in reserve, she thought.

“I have no idea who would want to kill me,” she stated.

“Really?” MacGregor didn’t bother to hide his disbelief, but he backed up a couple of steps, giving her some space, allowing her to let out her breath and hear something more than the pounding of her heart in her eardrums. “You don’t have any enemies?”

“None that would want to murder me.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Yes.” But was she? Dear God, the man was making her paranoid.

“Someone took a shot at you.” He unzipped his coat and slid his arms out of the sleeves, as if he’d finally warmed up. Something jangled in his pocket. Coins? Keys? A metal dog whistle?

“Or they were taking potshots at cars. I don’t think it was intentional. At least, not at me.”

“No?” Again, he was openly sarcastic and she felt a dread as cold and sharp as the icicles hanging from the eaves of this cabin.

Just who the hell was he?

It could be that he’s part of some kind of elaborate plot to kidnap or even kill you, and so far it’s working, isn’t it? She reined in her thoughts in a hurry. She’d never been one to believe in conspiracy theories and wasn’t about to start now.

But Aaron had been.

He’d always been certain someone, probably some kind of government agent, had been out to get him. He’d believed that John F. Kennedy had been killed by a group affiliated with Russia, Castro or the mafia, and he had been certain that D. B. Cooper, the skyjacker who had jumped out of a plane in the Northwest in the early seventies, had received help and somehow miraculously survived. Jillian, though, had always been a realist.

Until now.

Until she was trapped by a snowstorm with a stranger in the wilds of Montana.

Until she might possibly be the victim of a killer in this frigid killing ground. Had this man shot out her tire then “rescued” her, only to eventually murder her? It took all her restraint not to slide a glance toward his gun cabinet, though she wondered what kind of rifles were locked inside.

She clasped her hands together tightly. “You think someone was trying to kill me? Me, personally?”

“I don’t know.” He threw his jacket over the back of the couch and bent down to unlace his boots. “Do you?”

“I pissed off some people in my life, like I said. My sister, for sure. But not enough for anyone to want to kill me.” She watched as he kicked off a boot, nudging the heel of one with the toe of the other, then unzipped his ski pants, beneath which he was wearing jeans. The Goretex-looking outer layer of pants wound up beside the jacket. Now, at least, he looked thirty pounds lighter, but still big and strong enough to be intimidating.

“You should lie down,” MacGregor said, shoving a hand through his hair. “Elevate the ankle.”

It was true enough; her whole leg was aching now and she was tired from balancing herself against the table with her crutch. But the thought of going back into the bedroom, lying on the cot alone while listening to the wind howl, her mind spinning with questions, her imagination running wild with what he was doing, didn’t cut it.

“I think I’ll just sit here.” She pointed to the ancient chair and ottoman. Without waiting for him to answer, she hitched her way to the chair and sank down.

“How about I get us each something to drink?”

“Like what?” She settled into the chair and kept her knife in her sleeve. She wasn’t about to relax. Not yet.

Harley climbed to his feet and trotted, toenails clicking, into the kitchen after MacGregor. Through the archway, he said, “I’ve got coffee…and…” She heard him rooting around in the cupboards, doors opening and closing with soft thuds. “Well…no tea…but I do have some packets of instant soup. Or whiskey. That’s about what we’re down to. Whiskey over snow. We’ve got lots of that. Kind of an alcoholic snow cone.”

Was he kidding? “I think I’ll pass on the frozen drink,” she called toward the open doorway, but her stomach rumbled at the mere mention of food. How long had she gone without eating? Hell, she couldn’t remember her last meal.

He returned with a coffeepot that he set in the glowing coals of the fire. “This’ll take a while to heat,” he explained as his dog, with a hard last glare and snarl at Jillian, turned several circles before lying down on his rug again. His black-and-white head rested on his white paws as he stared at her.

“You never answered my question,” he reminded her. “What the hell were you doing driving in the blizzard?”

He hung his ski wear on pegs near the fireplace, then turned to her. “In the middle of the worst storm to hit this part of the state in a decade?”

“I was headed to Missoula,” she admitted after a moment.

“What’s there?”

“Not what. Who. And the answer is, my ex-husband.”

MacGregor considered it. “Maybe there’s someone who might want to kill you.”

“The divorce was amicable.”

He skewered her with a disbelieving look. “Yeah, right. And so why were you risking life and limb, driving through the Bitterroots in a snowstorm, to visit your ex?”

“I…I needed to talk to him.”

A dark eyebrow raised.

“A phone call wouldn’t have worked. I needed to see his reaction.”

“When you told him what?”

“When I asked him if he sent me pictures that are supposedly of my first husband. My dead first husband.”

He sat back on his heels. “Your ex–second husband sent you pictures of your dead first husband?”

“Yes, well, I think so. It could be a wild goose chase. I thought he died on a hiking trip in South America.”

“Your first husband…who’s dead. You think. But you’ve seen pictures of him, from your second husband.”

“Or someone who could be Aaron’s twin.”

“There a third husband in there?”

“No,” she answered dryly. “Just the two.”

“But now you think husband one might still be alive.”

“I don’t know. I had the pictures with me. They were in my notebook case.”

He walked to a built-in cupboard and withdrew her purse and laptop carrying case, both of which he brought to her chair and set next to the ottoman. Something about seeing her things again nearly brought tears to her eyes. It was as if she suddenly realized the desperation of her situation, how far removed she was from her life. Clearing her throat, she refused to break down, but she had to blink rapidly.

MacGregor asked, “Want me to get the photos out?”

“I assume you’ve already seen them.”

He nodded, not denying a word of it, as he took another trip to the cupboard and returned with her suitcase and the tattered remains of her grandmother’s quilt.

Again her heart squeezed and she wondered if she’d ever get home again.

“I did look through all your things. I was trying to figure out who you were and who I should call.”

“You have a phone?”

“A cell. But it’s not working. Neither is yours.”

She didn’t doubt him, but opened her purse with one hand and scrounged for her phone, searching past the lipstick tubes, pens, wallet, checkbook and—

“It would be easier if you dropped the knife.”

Her head snapped up to find him staring at her. For a split second she was certain he could see to the bottom of her soul. The filet knife felt suddenly heavy and bulky. She swallowed hard. Noticed that the dog had closed his eyes and fallen asleep. “I—uh…”

“Just drop it from your sleeve. Or do you want me to take it from you?”

“No…uh…” Deliberately, she set the knife on a small scarred table that held a single kerosene lamp, a fishing magazine and two books on astronomy.

“So now why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested.

How foolish she’d been to think she could trust him. And how ultimately dependent she was on him. She pulled out her cell phone and turned it on, hoping beyond hope that she would have service. Of course, she didn’t. No connecting bars registered and the battery was nearly dead.

Just as he’d said. She felt more vulnerable than ever.

“I have tried to call out,” he said. “Every damned day. That’s why I leave sometimes. To try and find a signal.”

She wondered about that. The times she’d thought she was alone, the hours when he’d been out of the cabin in the middle of a blizzard. It just hadn’t made much sense.

“I don’t get much service to begin with and I think some of the towers have been damaged by the storms.”

“Great.”

“I could have told you that the minute you woke up, but I figured you wouldn’t believe me.”

That much was right.

“So now,” he prodded. “About your husband?”

Jillian sighed. She stared at him and time stretched. And then she decided to go for it, just tell him everything. She began with her marriage to Aaron, what had happened in Suriname, then a fast-forward through her second marriage to the weird messages and finally the photographs, which, of course, he’d recovered from her car, as they’d been tucked in a pocket of her computer case. While she explained, he listened and tended the water heating in a coffeepot on the coals of the fire. He asked a few questions, but for the most part just let her speak, his face grim and taut.

When she’d finished, he poured hot water into a cup filled with instant coffee crystals and asked, “So now you believe your first husband, Aaron, is alive.”

“I think someone wants me to believe it.”

“To lure you here?” he asked.

She took a sip of the coffee. The hot liquid slid down her throat and hit her stomach hard. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“But the man in the picture looks enough like him that you came?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She was shaking her head at her own folly. “I know, it seems kinda crazy now.” She shoved her hair out of her eyes. “Or really crazy.”

“Was the marriage to Aaron in trouble?”

“No!” she said with more passion than she’d intended. “Well, I don’t think so. I mean, he had no reason to disappear that I know of.”

“Did he have bad debts?”

“We didn’t owe more than we could pay.”

“Did he have life insurance?”

“Yes, and it took a while, but they finally paid me. That’s how I bought my townhouse.” Why in the world was she confiding in him?

“And until you saw the pictures, you were convinced he was dead. He didn’t come after you for the money.”

“This letter and the phone calls—they came out of the blue. And now I think they all might have been a wild goose chase.”

“To lure you here,” he said again, “so someone could kill you?”

“That sounds…ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged, then rocked back on his heels and frowned. “I’m a hunter. I was in the military. There are lots of ways to kill a person and do it quickly, maybe not even get caught, but shooting out a tire and hoping the car will free-fall into an icy ravine isn’t a sure thing.”

“As evidenced that I’m still here,” she agreed.

“Right, and the killer knows you survived. Or, at least, I’m assuming he checked the car.”

“Maybe not. He could’ve thought the job was finished.”

“Or been frightened away by me.”

“Why not just shoot you, too?”

“He might not have been able to get a shot off. And anyway, we can’t assume you were the ultimate target. As you said, there’ve been other women killed around here. A couple of them, I think, and they, too, were forced off the road, like you, though I don’t know all the details.”

“We talked about the serial killer thing before,” she reminded him, and tried to ignore the panic she felt rising inside. “Are you trying to say that this killer knows his victims, or at least enough intimate details of their lives to get them here?” Dear God, she couldn’t believe the words that passed her lips and yet…. “Do you know the names of the other women?”

He shook his head. “No. Why? Do you think you might know them?”

She glanced nervously to the windows and the darkening landscape beyond. “I think I read one of their names, but it didn’t ring any bells.” She forced herself to look directly into his eyes. How did she know he wasn’t the killer? That he wasn’t toying with her? It didn’t seem that way. In fact he seemed downright concerned.

She swallowed hard.

Could she trust this man?

Did she have a choice?

The answer was no.

Like it or not, she was stuck here, at least for a while. But she didn’t have to stay. If she could get herself mobile, able to walk just a little, and the weather broke. He’d mentioned he had a snowmobile. She’d driven one before, while she and Aaron were on a ski trip to Colorado. If push came to shove, she could get it started and drive the damned thing to civilization, or another cabin, or any damned where.

She just needed a key.

Mason Rivers was a prick.

And a prick who was hiding something, Pescoli thought as she pulled into her driveway, cell phone at her ear. She’d just driven home through the blizzard to make sure the kids took everything they needed for the weekend visit with their father. Lights were on inside the house, but Jeremy’s truck wasn’t parked in its usual spot.

“My secretary said you were trying to reach me,” Rivers said guardedly, after brief introductions.

No shit, Sherlock, Pescoli thought, but kept it to herself.

“You’ve heard about your ex-wife?” Regan hit the button on her garage door opener.

“I was out of town, but a colleague brought in the paper saying that her car had been found at the bottom of a canyon.”

“That’s right.”

“Is she okay?” he asked as the garage door slowly opened.

“We don’t know. We can’t find her.”

A pause, the silence cut by the grinding of the garage door and her Jeep’s idling engine.

“We thought you might have an idea of where she was going, or where she’d been.” The truth of the matter was that the accident reconstruction team had spent hours on the ridge where Jillian’s car had spun out. They could tell from which direction the car had careened down the hill, but because of the spin, couldn’t discern which direction she’d been traveling. They had the clue of an empty coffee cup from the Chocolate Moose Café in Spruce Creek, and a waitress remembered Jillian, as she’d been one of the few customers taking anything “to go” that day. So, it seemed that she had been traveling toward Missoula rather than away from the town.

“You know, we were divorced two years ago and I’m remarried now. I don’t keep in contact with Jill or her family.”

“We thought she might be coming to see you.”

“Why?”

“That’s what we wanted to know.”

“Look, I have no idea where she was going or why. As I said, I haven’t had any contact with her since the divorce was finalized. Now, if there’s nothing further, I have a client waiting in my office.”

“Just let us know if you think of anything.”

“There’s nothing to think about, Detective.” He hung up and Regan was left with a bad feeling. She pulled into the garage, hit the remote so the door would crank down, then climbed out of the car and made her way into her house, where Cisco greeted her with wild tail wagging, excited yips and tight little circles of enthusiasm. She had only half an hour, then she had to be back at the department for a Friday afternoon meeting before she worked late into the night. Overtime. This year it would pay for Christmas.

The dog was still going out of what little he had for a mind.

“Cisco! Shut up!” Bianca yelled from her bedroom. The TV was blaring in the living room, tuned into some reality show about twenty-somethings being overly dramatic about the minutiae of their lives, all while dressed in nearly nothing. Lots of tanned, toned flesh, a few piercings visible, numerous tattoos, all peppered with tears, bad language and raw, teen-type angst and emotion.

“Real life, my ass.” Pescoli picked up the remote, downed the volume and turned to the local news.

Once the decibel level was in the normal hearing range again, Pescoli stuck her head into her daughter’s room. Painted a blinding pink when Bianca was ten, it was now covered in posters of the latest teen “hotties” from boy bands and movie stardom. Bianca was flopped over her unmade bed, cell phone glued to her ear.

“Where’s your brother?” Regan asked.

Bianca’s expression got all pissy. She mouthed, “I’m on the phone.”

“Big deal. Hang up. You can call whoever it is back.”

“What? Just a minute. My mom came in. No, it’s okay—”

“Hang up, Bianca. Your dad will be here in twenty minutes.”

Sending her mother a look meant to melt steel, Bianca said, “Look, I’ll call ya back. I gotta go…. What?…Yeah, that’s right. The warden needs me.” She hung up and sent her mother a triumphant smirk.

“The ‘warden’ wants to know that you’ve got all your stuff packed up for the weekend and where your brother is.”

“I’m ready to go.”

“Got your homework?”

“I don’t have to do homework at Lucky’s,” she said, invoking the name of her father, whom she hadn’t called “Daddy” since the divorce. “Michelle says—”

Pescoli snatched the cell phone out of her daughter’s hand.

“Hey!” Bianca cried as Pescoli snapped the phone closed.

“I don’t care what Michelle says, or really what ‘Lucky’ says either. You take your homework and you get it done, or you and ‘the warden,’ we’re going to have serious issues.”

“We already do!” Bianca declared.

“Yeah, I know. So where’s your brother?”

“Don’t know.”

“Sure you do. You got home somehow and I’m betting you didn’t take the bus.”

“Chris brought me.”

“Your boyfriend brought you home? Didn’t I tell you he wasn’t allowed in the house when I wasn’t here?”

“He dropped me off. Well, yeah, he came in and I gave him a jar of Jeremy’s Gatorade, so sue me, call the sport drink cops!”

“I am the cops,” Pescoli reminded her.

“He gave me an effin’ ride home! You should be glad. Jeremy ditched me.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know and I don’t really care. He said something about Lucky not being his real dad and him not having to go.” She glared at her mother. “Give me back my phone.”

“As soon as you’re packed, and that includes your homework.” Pescoli held tight to the cell. Fuming, she returned to the kitchen, let Cisco outside to do his business and checked his water. “Did you feed the dog?” she called over her shoulder and was met with seething, muted silence emanating from Bianca’s room. Obviously she was being given the silent treatment. Well, good. It was way better than hearing the backtalk. As the terrier pawed at the door to be let in, Pescoli dialed her son’s cell number, then opened the door. A blast of cold air followed the dog back inside.

Jeremy didn’t pick up. But then he never did. Why should now be different from every other day? The kid was being a jerk. And whose fault is that, huh? Who let him get away with murder as a kid because of guilt over Joe’s death? “Damn it all,” she muttered, not leaving a message on voice mail and, instead, defaulting to texting, which she hated, but at least now her kid would read the message.

Get your butt home. Now. xoxo Mom

“That should do it, huh?” she said to the dog, and then, hearing Bianca making noises as if she were putting together an overnight bag, Pescoli poured herself a Diet Coke, added ice and sat down on the couch. Cisco, done with his meager meal of dried food, hopped onto the lumpy cushion beside her and waited as she petted his scruffy head. “Feeling ignored?” she asked the dog. “Join the club.”

He hopped onto her lap, put his paws on her chest and licked her face.

“Okay, okay, enough already. I may be single, but I’m not this desperate.”

“Oh, sick,” Bianca said, walking out of her bedroom and carrying an overstuffed backpack.

“Grow a sense of humor,” Pescoli suggested, and finally Bianca managed a smile.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Now, can I have—”

Pescoli tossed her daughter the precious cell phone. “You do have your homework with you?”

“Yeah.” For once Bianca didn’t roll her eyes or go into her irritating pouty, put-upon act. She even bent over and petted Cisco on his head. “So what’re you doing this weekend?”

“There’s a maniac killer on the loose.”

“Oh, work?”

“Give the girl a gold star.” Regan took a long swallow from her glass, then watched as the ice cubes clicked and danced in the dark liquid.

“Don’t you get tired of it?”

“Mmm. Beats sitting at a desk nine to five. Or waiting tables. Did both of those before.”

Bianca wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. You see some pretty gross stuff.”

“Gross and totally demoralizing. Makes you wonder what’s wrong with the entire human race.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Someone has to.”

“But why you?”

“Because I’m good at my job.” And the truth of the matter was, she loved it. Lived for it. She, in her own way, was as much a workaholic as Alvarez. They just went at it from different angles. She smiled at her daughter and gave her a hug. “I try not to let it get me down.” She glanced at the muted television and saw an image of Ivor Hicks being interviewed on the screen. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“Someone let the loonies out.” Hearing the sound of a large truck’s engine, Regan braced herself for the inevitable meeting with Lucky. Today, after dealing with tight-assed Mason Rivers, she wasn’t in the mood to face her own ex. “Dad’s here,” she said, and Bianca visibly brightened. God, the kid loved her father. Which was probably for the best, but it still irritated Pescoli a bit.

Bianca threw her a look. “Are you going to tell him about Jeremy, or should I?”

“I’ll handle it.”

Jillian had heard MacGregor’s keys jangling in his jacket pocket. All she had to do was fish them out when he was sleeping, right? But she kept her thoughts to herself and asked instead, “Do you live here year-round?”

“Sometimes.”

“Doing what?”

He hesitated just a second and looked over her shoulder. “Fishing, hunting, white-water guide in the summer.”

“And in the winter?”

“Mostly get ready for the summer. Sometimes someone wants to go snowshoeing or cross-country skiing.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Not recently, though. Not with the storms.”

Her eyes narrowed. It sounded like BS to her. And this good-ole-country-boy act didn’t wash either. “All winter long, you stay inside here, by yourself.”

“I’ve got Harley.”

At the mention of his name, the dog, with eyes still closed, thumped his tail against the rug.

“What about family? Wife? Kids?”

There was just a second’s hesitation, a slight tightening of his lips, before he shook his head. “Just Harley. Short for Harlequin.” He bent down and scratched the dog behind his ears. “And no, I didn’t name him. Someone else did the honors.”

“Who?”

“Harley came with the place. I bought it from a guy a couple of years ago. His bitch had a litter of pups. One died, he gave the other four away and this one stayed on with me.” He winked at the dog, who stretched and let out a contented sigh. “So far, it’s worked out.”

“You never get lonely?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Not enough to make me change my ways.”

“You got family?”

“Not much.”

“How much?” she asked, wondering about him.

“Two half-sisters. Younger.”

“Your folks are dead?”

Again the slight hesitation, as if he were checking his lies, making sure he didn’t slip up. “I haven’t seen my mother in three years. Far as I know, she and husband number five…or is it six…I can’t remember, don’t care to, but the last I heard she was living outside of Phoenix somewhere.”

“You don’t see her.”

“Nope. And it suits us both fine. My old man took off before I was born. Never married my mother. I figure that’s why she kept trying.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“What is this? Twenty questions?”

“At least,” she said, and he finally leaned back in his chair, eyeing her over the rim of a cup that had to be holding cold coffee.

“Okay, I met him once. When I was about eighteen. It didn’t go well.”

She shifted in the chair and pain ricocheted up her leg, causing her to suck in her breath.

“I told you to lie down,” he said, placing his cup on the hearth and climbing to his feet. “If you don’t want to go back into the bedroom, you can lie here on the couch, or on the recliner, where you can elevate your feet.”

“Oh. Well.”

He walked over to her chair, picked the knife off the small table and carried it to a small bureau positioned near the tattered old La-Z-Boy. “You wouldn’t want to forget this,” he said. He set the boning knife in reach of the chair.

“I don’t need it.”

“Of course you do. You don’t know me. You don’t trust me and you’re stuck here. Now, come on.” He crossed the room again and offered her the crutch. “You rest and I’ll make us dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Stew and chili out of cans.” His lips twisted upward. “Gourmet chili,” he clarified, then helped her to her feet and walked her to the recliner. “Trust me. You’ll love it.”

That was the trouble. She couldn’t let herself trust him. Not for a minute.